Posted - 2012.01.18 07:33:00 -
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First mission: First go get my Velator, bring it back, OK. Now Aura gives me an Electron Blaster but no ammo to shoot with it (lucky i'm not a real noob or I might have missed that) and an Armor Repairer. She tells me to fit the repairer, but I don't have the skill Hull Upgrades yet, so I can't. Aura doesn't offer me the book, or explain the problem.

First mission: First go get my Velator, bring it back, OK. Now Aura gives me an Electron Blaster but no ammo to shoot with it (lucky i'm not a real noob or I might have missed that) and an Armor Repairer. She tells me to fit the repairer, but I don't have the skill Hull Upgrades yet, so I can't. Aura doesn't offer me the book, or explain the problem.

I was politely asked to comment on tutorial missions in this thread, so I shall! Here is the text from my original post:

Hello,

I'm a bit confused. I'm on my second training mission, which consists of learning how to go out into space and kill some things. I'm given some ammo, and the instructions say to r-click on my weapon to load the ammo.

Problem is... no weapon.

In rookie chat, I was told that I should have been given a weapon by Aura before receiving the ammo, but that's not the case. It's not in my cargo hold, not listed under assets at any location, not fitted onto my ship, and I have no pending mission completions with a weapon as a reward. Nowhere near enough ISK as a brand new player & character to afford even the cheapest hybrid turret.

Posted - 2012.01.20 01:03:00 -
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I actually had an idea that seemed like it would help a lot, but it might take a chunk of developer time to make. It would admittedly look pretty cool, and communicate a lot of visceral things about the world that are hard to explain in text.

You start the game. You are in first person, and automatically follow an agent who explains (in voice and subtitle) the basic idea of the capsule.

As you're walking, you pass a couple of mirrors and see your character walking, which creates immersion and sinks in the idea of a first person viewpoint where you won't see the back of your own biological head. You are told that you will be boarding a capsule, and you will be piloting it to your first ship, which is "barely adequate, but it will get you by for now".

You are led to a capsule and your viewpoint descends into the interior. You sink into the seat you saw on the way in, then there is a running water noise. Then you see the capsule fluid flow in, rising above your eyes to the top of the viewpoint, then darkness for a moment.

Then, your ship's UI interface (armor, shields, structure, capacitor, etc) lights up in an animated powerup sequence. You see some text about a camera drone connection being established, connecting, synching output scroll up, then dissapear to be replaced with an image. For the first second, the image is garbage-filled and staticky, but it immediately becomes clear - now, you see your first "normal" view of the game - the sight, viewed from your camera drone, of your capsule leaving the starbase at the beginning of the tutorial, already with instructions to warp and board your first rookie ship.

Anyways, about the existing tutorials, i have two issues.

One, the agents are very vague on what specific skills they will be teaching over their mission sequence. If they said in their intro something like "I'm going to be teaching you how to use drones, how to use webbing and scrambling equipment to keep enemies from escaping, how to avoid damage with speed and mobility, and how to make your ship faster with afterburners", I wouldn't be stumbling around at a loss of what skills I might need to buy on the market.

Two, the missions where you get things are too often arranged in ways where of the components you need to make it happen - the skill, the fitting, and if applicable, the ammunition - you get them in a way that feels haphazard. "I just got a machine gun.. but I intuitively recognize that I might need ammunition for it." If the mission, when giving the weapon, said something like "You'll need some ammunition, so the first thing we need to do is get you some bullets," then it wouldn't have the erratic feel it currently does.

I will add that at points I would get things and not have the skill to use them. IIRC, one of the Basic Combat missions offhandedly tells you to also fit a Small Armor Repairer I. At no point do you get the skill Repair Systems in conjunction with this request, and it was worded as if I did not have a choice. You MUST MOUNT THIS MODULE, even though you don't know how to and we can't be bothered to give you the skill to use it!

That is actually a side point as well. They give me Civilian Drones and tell me to use those drones to shoot a rat. The way it is worded made me think they wanted me to shoot the rat with those specific drones.. and I already had acquired some drones earlier. (off of looting a mission rat.) Thus I had to stop and ask on the Rookie Help channel whether it would cause problems for me to use a Hobgoblin I instead of a Civilian drone. This is actually not the only example of the text reading like that. Could the wording be looked at to make sure that it is in the sense of "You need to use a module that does X. If you don't have one already, here is a Civilian version." instead of "Use this Civilian module to do X."

I'm a bit confused. I'm on my second training mission, which consists of learning how to go out into space and kill some things. I'm given some ammo, and the instructions say to r-click on my weapon to load the ammo.

Problem is... no weapon.

In rookie chat, I was told that I should have been given a weapon by Aura before receiving the ammo, but that's not the case. It's not in my cargo hold, not listed under assets at any location, not fitted onto my ship, and I have no pending mission completions with a weapon as a reward. Nowhere near enough ISK as a brand new player & character to afford even the cheapest hybrid turret.

What am I missing?

Thanks!

If my memory serves correctly Aura gives you the weapon when you click through the mini-tutorial that pops up via the Neocom.

Agromos nulKaedi wrote:

If the mission, when giving the weapon, said something like "You'll need some ammunition, so the first thing we need to do is get you some bullets," then it wouldn't have the erratic feel it currently does.

When I did the Gallente tutorial Aura said almost those exact words.

Quote:

I will add that at points I would get things and not have the skill to use them. IIRC, one of the Basic Combat missions offhandedly tells you to also fit a Small Armor Repairer I. At no point do you get the skill Repair Systems in conjunction with this request, and it was worded as if I did not have a choice. You MUST MOUNT THIS MODULE, even though you don't know how to and we can't be bothered to give you the skill to use it!

That is actually a side point as well. They give me Civilian Drones and tell me to use those drones to shoot a rat. The way it is worded made me think they wanted me to shoot the rat with those specific drones.. and I already had acquired some drones earlier. (off of looting a mission rat.) Thus I had to stop and ask on the Rookie Help channel whether it would cause problems for me to use a Hobgoblin I instead of a Civilian drone. This is actually not the only example of the text reading like that. Could the wording be looked at to make sure that it is in the sense of "You need to use a module that does X. If you don't have one already, here is a Civilian version." instead of "Use this Civilian module to do X."

In the Gallente tutorial the Repair Systems skill is one of the first things that Aura provides, along with an instruction that you MUST commence training it before being able to proceed any further with the tutorial.

The civilian items are all well capable of going the jobs for which they're provided and it's good policy to use them, as there are some missions where they are mandatory.

Posted - 2012.01.20 20:03:00 -
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I don't know if Im just a bad player, but I found the exploration probing really really hard and frustrating. I had to give up a number of times and come back to it later to complete the missions. I don't know if this was due to a lack of player skill or actual character skill points in probing and exploration. Does it get any easier when you have better probing skills? The tutorial kind of left a bad taste in my mouth in regards to doing exploration as a career and moving into Wormholes.

I don't know if Im just a bad player, but I found the exploration probing really really hard and frustrating. I had to give up a number of times and come back to it later to complete the missions. I don't know if this was due to a lack of player skill or actual character skill points in probing and exploration. Does it get any easier when you have better probing skills? The tutorial kind of left a bad taste in my mouth in regards to doing exploration as a career and moving into Wormholes.

Player skill, since tutorial sites are really easy to probe once you understand how to do it.

Posted - 2012.02.09 16:43:00 -
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I wanted to express my sentiments on the tutorial process as well since my girlfriend and I just started playing Eve and ran into these same walls in the tutorial process. Especially about the reference to "rooms" being jump stations. That made absolutely no sense to either of us and we are both MMO veterans.

I really think CCP needs to bring in some outsiders to sit down and go through their tutorials to discover the pitfalls and correct them. It must be really hard as developers of this game because they know it inside and out and speak the Eve language fluently. To a new player it is already a daunting game in terms of depth, but when you complicate that with things like not explaining terminology, it becomes very "inside-baseball" and hard for n00bs to overcome.

CCP really needs to invest some time in this. I went to the rookie chat channel and just couldn't believe the amount of traffic in there from people just trying to figure out the basics when most of that could be mitigated with a better tutorial system.

I know a lot of this is easier said than done, but I really want to like Eve and want it to succeed. It's the most beautiful MMO out there and has some serious potential and that's hindered by the overwhelming learning curve that could be addressed given some serious time and thought.

Posted - 2012.02.10 16:56:00 -
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IGGVve been playing Eve for over 3 years now and this week decided to use the buddy invite to add a second player to my portfolio.

So far IGGVve done 4 of the tutorial missions and must say I could write a book on the problems with them. As many have said items are given to you without training skills to match, instructions are often vague or are out of sequence with the actual mission you are trying to complete.

The worst GGblundersGGV so far;Tells you to stop your ship by clicking the small triangle but does not say left or right.Told to go and mine an asteroid but no mining laser provided (I did get mine from the previous mission by looting a wreck) .Refined the Trit only to find the mission was incomplete because I did not destroy the NPC that attacked me.Ask me to fit a small armour repairer without the skill to fit it.Was given the Salvaging skillbook but unable to train it as I did not have Mechanics L3 and Survey L3.Given the Contracting skillbook but according to the message this cannot be trained on a trial account.Given the Negotiation skillbook but this needs Social L1 and I donGGVt have that.Hacking needed Electronic Upgrades L3Overdrive Injector needs Hull Upgrades L1

And so it goes on.

The biggest problem I had was doing the scanning tutorial.Now with my main I can scan down just about anything in 5 Mins or less using just the standard Core Probe Launcher and Core probes.

But the tutorial missions took ages.First you were not told to make a safe spot to do your scanning from (even in Empire this will get you killed).Second there were no instructions on deploying more than one probe and nothing on how to use them to scan for a signature.The first mission took me over half an hour to reach 100%, every scan got me 99.99% and still a red circle, in real mode I would have expected over 50% to give one or more red dots and over 80% to give green triangles to allow positioning of the probes.

It was when I didnGGVt follow the instructions to enlarge the scanning diameter of the probes and kept them all as deployed did the following missions complete as expected.

At this point I gave up taking notes, to be honest I much preferred the old way, hereGGVs a ship with a miner and a gun go shoot red crosses and rocks and learn by yourself lol.

"You wait - time passes, Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold." from The Hobbit on ZX Spectrum 1982.

Posted - 2012.04.14 08:47:00 -
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Well it's been a few months since I did my EVE tutorials and started this thread. It's great that others got some value out of it, and added their own concerns. I have persevered wtih EVE and consider myself to be a hi-sec care bear. I haven't joined a corp, preferring to do my own thing, however from time to time I join a fleet with the other half and their corp mates.

Skills can take a long time to train and initially I injected everything which I came across in the tutorials up to Level 2 or 3. This is fine until you decide what you want to specialise in. Then you have to decide what floats your boat. Do you like blowing stuff up? Do you like the adrenalin rush of trying not to be blown up by some yellow coloured player looking for bait? Do you like the ability to mine and go AFK while the mining lasers cycle, and come back when your can/ship is full? Do you want to explore? Do you want to do research? When you decide what thing (or things) you are passionate about it is time to take the related skills to Level 5.

I've been concentrating on a couple of things so as not to spread myself too thin. I want to be the master of something, and not just an all rounder. I've honed my salvaging skills and am running around in a cool Noctis that can hoover the loot in faster than my fleet mate can blow it up! As well as that I am working my way toward being a Tycoon, and am building up my market skills so I can buy and sell everything that even sniffs of a good deal, with the aim of making heaps of ISK.

I'm tempted to breathe life into one of my two alts so I can go do the tutorials again. That will reinforce my knowledge of EVE, as I'm not sure I took it all in the first time being a noob and all.

Posted - 2012.04.14 13:20:00 -
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Just wanted to ask the devs to fix a problem where on creation of new characters/alts, the normal tutorial begins but not the 'first steps in eve' or whatever it is, so yo udon't get your core skillbook(s) eg armour repair, so when you get the repair tool and are asked to equip it, you can't, nor can you afford to buy the book. You need to go in to the F12 menu and start that tutorial. Seems like an oversight, but it's a regular occurrence on the rookie channel and I was also stumped by it a few times. Please fix this! Thanks :D

Career Advancement Tutorials - Military. Mission 3 out of 10 in 'Cash flow for Capsuleers' has me a little perplexed. After accepting the mission, Aura popped up to tell me to check whether I have an agent-gifted Stasis Webifier and if not go and buy one. I haven't been given one so went to the market and looked it up. The prerequisites for using this item is 'Propulsion Jamming' skill, which I don't have yet. Guess what the reward for this mission is? Yep.... the Agent (Berlimaute Remintgarnes)is offering me the 'Propulsion Jamming' skill at the end of my mission.Solution: go and buy the skill and train it up so I can run the mission, then later on sell the one the agent provides to me.

The Civilian Webifier doesn't need any skills and is ment to be used in this case. After you learn how it works, you should now use the more stronger variant which is "Webifier I". This one requires the skill you get as a reward.

Now the stupid thing is that the tutorials don't encourage in any way people to look at an items attributes. And when for some reason you don't get the civilian item, then the whole tutorial as it was meant becomes a strestfull part that you have to pass, but don't know what it is good for.

"The use of Webifiers is useless in EVE Online. There is no need to use the item at all. " - This is the belief you get after completing the mission. The WALL of TEXT is supposed to explain what the item is good for, but it fails at getting the players attention to read it or present the importance of the items effect on game-mechanics in PvP or PvE.

Solution 1: Let the player fly to the destination and tell him to hit a target that is orbiting you at 1k with 1000m/s. - To destroy the enemy you need to slow it down by using the Webifier.

Solution 2: Tell the player to fly from point A to point B and then back again. A friendly ship should appear and slow you when you return from B to A. (generally a player will notice his own ship getting slower, but is unlikely to notice when the enemy is getting slower when you use a Webifier on it)

There are so many ways how the importance of speed in EVE Online could be explained, but instead the game requires you to only fly to the location and use the Webifier for 1 cycle on an enemy. The text based story also doesn't help much.

Posted - 2012.04.15 19:37:00 -
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Granted, in the early days of EVE we litterally got a noob ship, something to shoot with (civilian of course) and a civilian miner, and that was it. Good luck kid, go have fun!

The current tutorial system is a huge improvement in that area, but there are too many errors present. If I remember correctly at some point I got a skill book for small projectile weapons when doing my Advanced Combat tutorial. As a Minmatar, I start with that skill at level 2 (if I remember correctly) upon character creation, so why on earth do I get that skill book? And of all moments, in the Advanced Combat tutorial?

I recognize everything everyone here mentioned. I just returned after a long time being away from the game. Made myself a new toon, knowing that things will have changed quite a bit, and rather start from scratch at least knowing what it is that I am doing. Thank heavens I know part of the core mechanics, otherwise I would have gotten stuck like others have.

Oh, and the scanning tutorial is indeed the worst. I did watch one of the tutorial videos, but it would have been impossible without it to even come close to probing something down. Then at times you really have to scan for like 30+ minutes to find something. That is absurd. Also, what is a red ball? And what do those red circles mean? It is all not clear at all.

It is staggering how many players actually follow the tutorial, undock and immediately start launching probes. I still remember from the days how to create a safe spot, go there and then I start probing. Doesn't it make sense to teach rookies that habit right away? As it is now, those tutorials at times are teaching new players sure ways to get killed really fast by experienced players who pray on them. Not really the best or most fun introduction into a game if it happens to someone, I would say.

EVE already is a totally different experience from other MMOs so one cannot assume that people will 'understand'. Most likely they just get frustrated most of the times and quit.You guys would do those new players and yourself a favor to really have a close look at those tutorials. There really is a lot of room for improvement there.

At some point in the Advanced Combat tutorial I noticed a lot of text trying to explain certain game concepts. Get rid of that, barely anyone will read that. Just make it short, to the point, and clear. Give survival tips, and refer to the Wiki and other sources for those who want to sit down and read. And yes, force a sequence. It definitely is not true that the order doesn't matter, it does at times when it comes to skill books and needed skills.

I could write more, but that has already been covered by others. Good luck improving the tutorials. Once improved, those could bring in quite a bit more people than now, for sure.

There should be something to instruct the player to use multiple probes. Yes CCP has a scanning guide on you tube, but how on earth would a nub in client ever know that?

If there was a way to make the scan sites easier to find, just in that system it might be a time saver for noobs. It might be interesting to see how many new players leave that tutorial unfinished out of sheer frustration. Im betting the number might be higher then you think.

I stuck with it despite **** scanning skills because I wanted the standing boost and I know how to do it properly. Even with a good understanding of the mechanics it will take you 15 - 20 mins to find a site.

The worst GGblundersGGV so far;Tells you to stop your ship by clicking the small triangle but does not say left or right.Told to go and mine an asteroid but no mining laser provided (I did get mine from the previous mission by looting a wreck) .Refined the Trit only to find the mission was incomplete because I did not destroy the NPC that attacked me.Ask me to fit a small armour repairer without the skill to fit it.Was given the Salvaging skillbook but unable to train it as I did not have Mechanics L3 and Survey L3.Given the Contracting skillbook but according to the message this cannot be trained on a trial account.Given the Negotiation skillbook but this needs Social L1 and I donGGVt have that.Hacking needed Electronic Upgrades L3Overdrive Injector needs Hull Upgrades L1

1. Dunno about you, but if someone tells me to click on something (with no modifiers, such as "double" or "right"), it is understood as "single-left-click on the thing"2. Civilian Mining lasers are (should be) provided for you.3. Read the mission descriptions/outlines -- Usually they say "go here, kill that guy, and get my loot"4. You probably got that skill as a reward for the previous mission (or they screwed up and had "armour" instead of "shield")5. yeah, and?6. Yeah, not all the tutorials have stuff for trials. This stuff is a "carrot" to sign up.7. See 5.8. See 5. 9. See 5.

They don't give you everything so you can start getting familiarised with getting crap from the market...

Posted - 2012.04.16 21:28:00 -
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the biggest problem I ever had with the tutorials was the damn overview settings. I would fly out to a mission location and because my default setting did not have the mission object "checked", I would fly around the damn thing for a hour. Then I would google the mission and after reading multiple websites, finally found out I needed to add something to my overview.On holiday. -aIn some other world.Where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours.To a bright centre of absolute convicton. -aWhere the dripping patchouli was more than scent. -aIt was a sun

Confirming Scan probing takes the longest out of the four tutorials....I stuck with it despite **** scanning skills because I wanted the standing boost and I know how to do it properly. Even with a good understanding of the mechanics it will take you 15 - 20 mins to find a site.

You are bad with it then.

I did it recently with alt to get standings and that career agent is maybe fastest to do - when you know how to do it.

Before talking to agent, get scanning ship, find 2 of each site type, save location of each. (Scan near planets, took maybe 1 minute or less per site for me.)

When doing actual missions you don't need to do any scanning, just use bookmarks you created and run through missions. (Bookmarks aren't valid forever which is why you should have more than 1 each.)

Posted - 2012.05.04 03:09:00 -
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I did have some suggestions, but it mainly involves finding ways to get new players to listen/follow instructions better during the tutorials.

I had no problems at all doing any of the Aura tutorials, or the agent tutorials. But everyday for the past few days i always see people having trouble getting their pod to their first ship, getting to the Academy Office to get their cert, or having trouble with the industry mission because they got 999 Veldspar but not from the location specified in the Journal/Mission Brief Sheet.

Pretty sure all these problems are because people arent listening to Aura or reading what she says or reading what the journal/agent mission brief says. I dunno maybe Aura's avatar needs to be changed from a bald blue lady, to a really hot blonde chick or something so that people will pay attention to her. Or something added to her briefing stating that people need to listen and read her instructions as well as agent instructions otherwise they will be lost.

Posted - 2012.05.04 08:22:00 -
[51] - Quote
Fab' feedback... refreshing to see new players take the time to suggest improvements (and fixes) to their experience, though one would have thought after nine years silly oversights in the tutorials would have been eliminated... as the OP would say: over to you Dev's.

Posted - 2012.05.06 12:34:00 -
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I agree with all those posting about the scan probes section being rather cryptic. Fortunately it was easy to find clear instructions on Youtube. I don't know if I missed it or if it isn't explained how the power of the scans is inversely proportionate to the radius which made the tutorial a bit tough. Everything else felt relatively intuitive, although far from being comprehensive. I had no idea how the mechanics of upgrading blueprints, and the advanced features of the trade window. I still don't know anything about planetary mining and what is involved in building a POS. The current tutorial in conjunction with other online resources (Evelopedia, forums, Youtube) works well, but it definitely isn't enough to stand alone.

I've not run the tutorials with a new character in some months ... and it sounds like things have changed. That or I just don't remember ...

*sigh*

For me - the start that I liked best - was when they started you in your rookie ship with a miner & a weapon out in this asteroid belt and walked you through how to engage a rat and mine an asteroid. They cut that for some reason ... then they got rid of it all together. Crash Course was what that was called at one point in time.

Now ... two things ...

1) The tutorials should either give you what you need - or - tell you to buy it and how to do that. They should also test the damn things thoroughly so that new people aren't sent through low sec on a tutorial currier mission ... Gaming companies are notorious for not testing their software properly. Why bother to spend money testing something when you've got all these people playing the game you can inflict your untested software on and have them do it for you?

2) There are always going to be some people who just don't get it. Sometimes they're dumb and sometimes they just don't get something. I've had times when I just didn't understand what I was supposed to do - only to have one of those "OH!" moments - figure it out and go on from there. The problem for CCP - is that they are NEVER going to be able to lead 100% of the new people by the hand through the tutorials without some of them just not getting it - no matter what they do. These people will whine and complain and cry - the dumber ones cry the most - and these people should just be ignored. The developers shouldn't screw up a good tutorial just because someone didn't get it. In short - the developers need to be able to tell the difference between legitimate complaints and whining ... which most developers can't do.

The things that have always bothered me the most about the tutorial missions - was that:

1) Like a regular mission - it was possible to fail them.

2) Like a regular mission - you had 7 days to complete a series of missions or they timed out.

1) The tutorials should either give you what you need - or - tell you to buy it and how to do that. They should also test the damn things thoroughly so that new people aren't sent through low sec on a tutorial currier mission ...

Fortunately, none of the tutorial missions sends you through low sec. The player who complained about that was an idiot who spotted some cheap ammo for sale after he accepted the mission, went on a detour through low sec to get it and then blamed the mission for "sending" him there.

Posted - 2012.05.07 21:01:00 -
[55] - Quote
I'll have to go back and check, but I think you can actually get many of the skillbooks simply by viewing the tutorials via the Help button on the NEOCOM. Normally, those are prompted during the course of Aura's missions, but you can front load them if you want. I think I did this my last run through so I could immediately start training the skills I needed while running through the tutorials.

Some thoughts:

- I think the most helpful redesign of the missions would be more "hand holding" by the agents. While EVE is a very "not hand holding" game, but I think it would be helpful in the tutorials. In every mission, I think you should fly out to meet another ship who provides instructions on what to do in a very deliberate manner. I think this would make it much easier to understand the purpose and function of certain modules, like afterburners, stasis webifiers, etc.

- It would be nice if a pop-up box showed up whenever you completed a mission, even if it was only for the training missions. I'll always remember the lesson I learned on the training mission that features the bomb in the hotel: always keep local up. When the bomb went off, I didn't have local up, so I really had no clue, as a rookie, what was happening. Then the two ships showed up and tore me apart. I had stuck around because I didn't know the mission was complete (again, I didn't have local up).

But yeah, I think there definitely needs to be an examination of the tutorial/training missions to help smooth acclimation to the game.

Posted - 2012.05.07 22:57:00 -
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The one suggestion I can make: Add links to the videos that people can watch when they get stuck. I was stuck on that damn probing mission for ages before I goggled up a you tube video on it. Make a video showing someone running every mission and always give them the option of watching the video first to get a feel for it. Provide more advanced videos for things to complex to do a rookie mission on.

For example I didn't realize that level 1 security missions required a destroyer. I lost 4 frigs and most of my money before I got it. There was no description providing of the type of ships need for such missions. Very bad design.

Posted - 2012.05.08 11:47:00 -
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I just finished reading MMM's ISK volume 1, which helped clarify most of my questions remaining. It is far less of a "strategy guide" than an instruction manual which is appreciated. The forums here are great for ship fittings and various strategies for missions, while ISK volume 1 is perfect for charts, and explanations of basic game mechanics.

I'll have to go back and check, but I think you can actually get many of the skillbooks simply by viewing the tutorials via the Help button on the NEOCOM. Normally, those are prompted during the course of Aura's missions, but you can front load them if you want. I think I did this my last run through so I could immediately start training the skills I needed while running through the tutorials.

Not only skillbooks, but also some of the modules.

Derek Wiildstar wrote:

For example I didn't realize that level 1 security missions required a destroyer. I lost 4 frigs and most of my money before I got it. There was no description providing of the type of ships need for such missions. Very bad design.

I believe the general advice is that only a frigate is required for most, if not all, Level 1 missions.

Posted - 2012.05.22 23:58:00 -
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Sorry if this is considered a "necro-post", but I figured it was better to bump a fleshed out thread than make a new one, especially since a lot of the issues mentioned in this thread are still present in the game.

I'm a returning player, so I know some of the basics (like navigating the market), but the Career Advancement tutorials are still a bit of a pain due to missing skills, and rewards given before you can use them.

1. For starters, Caldari pilots receive a Condor and two Rocket Launcher modules during Cash Flow for Capsuleers, but have to find the skill book for Rocket Launchers themselves on the Market (which is a bit of an adventure, if you haven't done it before, as the Market tutorial comes later, if I remember correctly).

2. Caldari pilotes also receive a Merlin frigate upon accepting the final mission in the chain, but the Merlin requires Caldari Frigate 3 to use and Caldari pilots start with Caldari Frigate 2. Training time for level 3 is 7+ hours, which would be well after receiving your Cormorant (destroyer) in the Advanced Military tutorial (if you still get that).

CCP officials mentioned that several of these issues have been forwarded to the developers back in January/February, but they're still in the game 3-4 months and an expansion later. They're not game-breaking issues, but when combined, new players (and returning players) are presented with an experience that is both unnecessarily confusing and slightly unprofessional.

That said, the new tutorials are way better than the old ones. I still remember having to click through 40+ tutorial windows back when I started playing. The new tutorial chains are much smoother and more to the point, but some "relics" from ancient times still need to be weeded out, like Aura mentioning that your first weapon doesn't use ammo (Civilian module you no longer receive in the tutorial), and Aura throwing various modules in your face without the skill books to go with them, or any information on how to get the necessary skill books.

If you want new players to get a better impression of the game -- and considering how important first impressions are, I think you do -- you really need to devote some time and resources to the tutorial system. It doesn't need to be revamped, it just needs a tester to go through the various mission chains and someone to fix the various inconsistencies, like missing skill books and such.

My first impression (sorta, since it's not really my first) of EVE Online so far can be summarized as:

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